


Echoes of another

by lqbys



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternative Universe - Cyber Punk, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, M/M, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lqbys/pseuds/lqbys
Summary: King he can be, king he feels, and king he is.King Eustass makes him feel.
Relationships: Eustass Kid/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Echoes of another

**Author's Note:**

> so, last year, when my fav band in the world announced their third album and upcoming world tour with [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECGZhQRW4AAjo-i?format=jpg&name=4096x4096), my brain fried on the mf spot and I scrambled to my desk to start this. Unfortunately, life happened, I lost motivation, and boom, one year later, finally found enough strength to edit and finish it, which feels like a huge fucking victory if you ask me 
> 
> anyway, this was loosely inspired by starset's universe, which, yknow, i adore to bits and all and recommand if yer a fan of outerspace AND rock. Also! I had [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lan-Pjv99Xk&list=RDMMlan-Pjv99Xk&start_radio=1) track on loop while writing, huge mood setter tbh

———————————————————————

“How does it feel?”

A silence, two heartbeats. Law’s own erratic inside his chest.

“To be what they’re all afraid of. To exist outside their norms.” 

To live in the dark—complete, soundless, to be your own in a city where people glowed brighter than the buildings, in a world full of chaos, avatars and artificial beings. 

Law traces the scars of the man’s right arm. Severed. Has it been war, has it been revenge, has it been reclaiming his own flesh? Eustass’ temple is dark as the nights before rapture happened, before the sun stopped going down the horizon. Yet here, under the single candle burning away in the chandelier hanging above their heads—in the secrecy of Law’s empty castle—he glows brighter than any city of the new age, a vivid, explosive red that’d blind him if he looked too long. 

“How does it feel, Eustass?” Law repeats, quietly, as if they had the power to destroy everything sacred.

He remembers the books on Robin's shelf, the ones from several lifetimes ago—centuries old and dirty, the last remains of a fallen world. Icarus—the hopelessness of men leading to tragedies. Would he turn to ash and dust too if he got too close, lingered around longer? Would he burn, looking too close to the fire burning within Eustass’ eyes?

Law never gets an answer, no matter how much he asks. Eustass quiets with violent kisses and fingers digging into flesh, pushing his entire weight against his body, trapping him under his massive form as a punishment of some sort.

Law doesn't mind; he's nothing if not patient, and Eustass has the terrible habit of disappearing months at times, leaving him wondering and waiting. Law doesn’t mind; he waits, no matter how long, in a castle full of ghosts and lifeless machines.

———————————————————————

The skies used to have colors, once. Sunsets of bright orange and red, or pink and blue mingling; vivid violet, golden yellow—sunrises just the same, but only prettier.

Law’s skies are different shades of grey. Tokyo by day is a cold electronic entity. High-speed engines and bullet trains spin around its towers, flashes of light contrasting against the massive black silhouette of the city. Law smokes by his balcony, eyes set on the horizon where the city is. 

He chain smokes until three, and wonders. It’s cold, it’s always cold, but never as much as when he’s trapped within the castle, so Law endures biting frost just to watch Tokyo turn into a monster once the sun settles. 

Day by day, Law loathes the sight a little more.

———————————————————————

Law thinks of himself as king, when he gets into character a bit too much. When money's flowing and business is good, when his kingdom is full of desperate workers and hopeless soldiers, stone-hearted women that’d enter his empire broken and leave with chests full of synthetic bliss.

Law feels like a king and sometimes acts like it; there’s nobody to contest his throne, but at times his rage slips through the cracks of a carefully composed mask. He doesn’t yell, never would, yet bodies drop and the androids keeping guard of his castle make sure there’s no traces left of it. Doflamingo doesn't mind the disposable ones gone missing; after all, Law’s the sole money maker of the house, and nobody ever said anything about collateral damage. 

Law, although crownless in the real world, doesn’t care either way.

He feels king when it's dark, when there's no one but him in the vast, great halls. When he’s sitting on the lonely couch in the midst of other antiquities—a tub with details carved in gold, an obsolete radio station, statues of marbles missing limbs—and staring up at the high ceilings full of ominous paintings. 

King he can be, king he feels, and king he is. 

King Eustass makes him feel.

———————————————————————

There's not much they know about the man. No matter how much effort Monet puts into figuring out who the tall, tattooed redhead is, how many hunters she puts out to sniff and dig around, Eustass Kid remains ghost.

He doesn't exist. 

Law'd disagree. Eustass is as real as the wicked rest of them, rough edges and rotten heart hidden somewhere in its cage of bones. He had his crimes painted on his skin, a thousand different languages and abstract designs, wingless angels and fallen gods, the horrors he'd been a part of, the ones he caused. They didn't talk, perhaps would never, but when he had the man naked and bathing in the dim lights of candles on silk sheets, he was the muse and Law the painter; his body a soiled temple first, and inspiration second for Law's morbid, made-up stories in his mind.

(What are you, what are you, what are you? Where do you come from? Who are you, what are you, what’re you breathing for, what’re you living for? Why didn’t you get a bionic arm, where did you get all those scars—do you know what the ocean looks like?)

Law doesn't ask, and Eustass doesn't tell. Two vertical round dots glow like tiny suns against Law's temple. He isn't the government's—white—anymore, yet still belongs to another being—yellow. Donquixote is the strange bird in the flock, the anomaly, irregular and disturbing, who has been granted the rare privilege of ownership. And Law is wholly, completely his, body and soul and some more.

The ghost's hand, big and calloused—a worker's, if not a killer's—traces the lines of the Lights.

“Tell me what you did, and I’ll tell you who I am.” 

Law’s breath comes out shaky.

The world outside of his castle is bright and unforgiving, full of skyscrapers and artificial beings, skies radiating toxic particles day and night though it hardly mattered anymore. Some people glow white, others red; most by three, but there are those, like Law, who have been stripped from their third dot—and a great portion of their fundamental rights (or whatever was left of it nowadays). Three white dots mean good, efficient and pleasant worker, not drawing attention to themselves—two mean trouble and rebellion, those who dared looking up instead of down. 

One means quarantine. 

Tokyo isn’t a dictatorship—Japan, like most countries, disappeared long ago; frontiers and borders stopped mattering when bombs annihilated most civilisations, and megapoles became tiny, independant universes of their own—but repression is feroce against those who wouldn’t cooperate. Trafalgar Law, a long time ago, before Doflamingo, before his castle, had been a nuisance. He was lucky they hadn’t stripped him down to a single Light, or he would’ve been disregarded and despised, a parasite to society, barely above the animal and lesser than androids. 

But that story is Law’s and Law’s only—just like Eustass’ existence is Eustass’ mystery to keep.

Law smiles, a wicked little thing, before he settles back against the pillows and closes his eyes.

———————————————————————

Law remembers the way adrenaline exploded in his veins when Eustass Kid opened the gates of his castle and presented himself, proud, tall—Lightless. He’s heard tales of those who didn't glow, the renegades—humans, as they'd once been—and wondered if he’d come to his rescue.

He didn’t. 

To this day, Law expects disappointment everytime Eustass turns his back; there’s hardly any. Eustass leaves and Law, soiled, detached, watches him silently.

There’s nothing to complain about, not anymore, not when he could be out in the pink and blue streets of Tokyo, his fate in its cruel hands, but sometimes Law wonders. About the world outside, about the other side of the moon and the animals that once populated Earth. About continents and countries, about whatever was hiding behind nuclear clouds. Donquixote provided good for his workers, Law first among them; his establishments only frequented by those he found worthy of his many whores, but some nights, Law thought the throne was a lonely place to be. 

Lonely, cold, boring. The men staining his sheets, the women leaving jewels hidden under his pillows—they filled his days with pleasure and noise, but the castle’s emptiness and silence was crushing when you were aware of it.

Law got used to faded neon lights and shadows in the dark, raised in the wretched heart of Shinjuku where criminals and cannibals hid their reds under dim whites; he got used to the numbness of his being, just like he got used to glow by two. Yet in the dead of the night, when the only sounds were those of forgotten machines singing mechanical swan songs—he couldn’t get used to emptiness. 

Eustass’ presence, the way he occupied the vacant space around Law shamelessly, unapologetic even without his glow, somehow made brighter and stronger by its absence—it made Law remember what it’s like to long for something. To feel; to be alive, to feel each tiny pulsation of his Lights all the way to the tip of his fingers, those of his heart. 

For an hour, two, sometimes less and sometimes more, Eustass crowds Law’s space and Law lets him. 

He doesn’t forget, though. 

Law’s prime merchandise, the finest of every product displayed in Donquixote’s little boutique, no simple whore and certainly not cheap. The new age didn’t care one bit about prostitution; it was even highly needed business, especially when whores were flesh and bones instead of blue fluids and lab-grown brains, but it wasn’t for everyone. 

Doflamingo’s empire has always been heavily seeked out, but no one could get in unauthorized—neither get out of its walls alive if anything were to happen to his little birds.

Law doesn’t forget who he is, or what he does. He doesn’t forget Eustass pushed open the heavy doors of his castle only because it was, perhaps, the only establishment in Tokyo to accept people like him—lightless. He couldn’t be saved, couldn’t get out, didn’t have a right to miss something he’d tried so long and so hard to escape. 

Tokyo’s misery isn’t his anymore. He'd take the castle over Eustass’ freedom anytime, anywhere.

———————————————————————

“Have you ever been out, Eustass-ya?”

In the far back of the great hall, if you keep walking in the dark unafraid of the outdated androids clad in neo-armors and forcing their long-defective limbs to move—there’s a door. 

No one’s ever been granted the privilege of accessing that part of the castle. 

Eustass, as always, is the sole exception.

Law’s room is plain in design, but so very alike every other studio in downtown Tokyo. There are photographs—printed, the old way—on one wall, of places and times before half the world went under water and the other suffered napalm rains. Once a year, Doflamingo would gift him some to celebrate his birthday, or satisfied customers making astronomical donations just because Law's mouth had worked its magic. Law isn’t a collector, Law isn’t sentimental and nostalgic, but some nights, the pictures are the only anchor to reality he has, and the only reason he hasn’t been consumed by insanity yet.

Law isn’t a believer of anything, but if asked—and only if asked—he would say there’s magic behind every single photograph. 

Eustass merely glances at them.

“Out,” he says, like the word is as foreign as it is familiar. “Do you want me to answer that?” 

Law thinks about it, and ends up smiling. “I don’t,” he replies, and it’s true; out doesn’t mean anything to him, and it never will.

His world starts and stops at his castle’s gates, and his life is another person's possession. Better doesn’t exist.

Eustass’ hands, massive and damaged, cradle his face and force his chin up. If Law tries hard enough, he can pretend the light in Eustass’ eyes is absolute evidence that the man is real, substantial, living and breathing and no fantasy of his own. If Law tries hard enough, he can pretend that the light in Eustass’ eyes isn’t the direct reflection of his own Lights.

Law doesn’t.

“How does it feel?” he says again, again, and again, hands on Eustass’ everywhere, tracing scar tissue and tattoos. Law’s fingers move lazily, languidly, but his tone carries a distant urgency Eustass either purposely ignores, or—isn’t designed to register. Law wonders, again, again and again, and tries to pretend a bit longer that Eustass is real, real real. “How does it feel?” 

He doesn’t exist.

Eustass’s hands press harder against his cheeks; it’s grounding, if not painful, for Law’s brain stopped acknowledging the physical manifestation of pain long ago.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” he, too, says again, no infliction to his tone, no real shimmer to the red of his eyes.

Law closes his own, bites down a whimper. In a castle full of lifeless machines, Eustass is perhaps just another one. There’s nothing to prove the contrary, no truth to hold onto, no Light pulsing at his temple to testify of his existence. Law’s fingers draw blood where they cut into Eustass’ skin, and red droplets running down his biceps bring no real comfort—it’s barely enough, it’s not enough, and Law thinks about keeping Eustass trapped in his room forever to see if he’d waste away or barely feel the passing of time. 

It’s a terrible thought. Eustass makes sure he forgets about it, pressing violent kisses against his mouth and leaving purple and blue on every parcel of skin he touches and for the first time in forever, it doesn’t feel like any kind of punishment. 

It feels like devotion. It feels like adoration, worship, and every other damned thing that disappeared along the old world. For an hour, for two, maybe more, Eustass is all over him, crowds his space and distracts his mind and Law lets himself forget.

Eustass isn’t supposed to exist. 

Law—crownless, chained, out of his mind—doesn’t care either way.


End file.
